Here is the official description of the set:Visit the beachside Old Fishing Store, featuring a shop packed with fishing-themed elements, and a connected watchtower with a 360-degree viewing balcony and office on the lower level. Ideal for display and role-play, this model has 2 removable roofs, an opening back wall in the shop for easy access, 4 minifigures, cat and 3 seagull figures, as well as loads of other cool details and elements to fire up the imagination. Includes 4 minifigures: a captain, fisherman, fisherwoman and a child, plus cat and 3 seagull figures. Also includes a booklet about the fan designer and LEGO designer of this set. Measures over 12” (32cm) high, 9” (25cm) wide and 9” (25cm) deep. 2,049 pieces. Price: $149.99 – SEE THE ONLINE LEGO SHOP

While previously we were only able to see the box design and the exterior of the building, now LEGO also added pictures of many of the interior details. For example, on the picture above, you can see that the building it set up with easily removable roof pieces to play inside. In addition, the lookout tower splits into two sections, with a little office on the lower level, and a viewing balcony on the upper level.

The shop itself features an opening back wall for more accessibility, and as you can see, it is fully packed inside with all kinds of interesting accessories. Some of the most noteworthy ones are the printed fishing hook boxes, the printed notespads (these are not new, but still pretty rare), the red tool box (also not new, but fairly rare), and a good selection of diving gear. The whole store is messy and crammed, just like a real old fishing store.

The exterior features steps to the front and side doors, railings going around the front and side, and lots of accessories thrown about. I believe that the ‘Anton’s Bait Shop’ sign is a 2×4 printed tile, and the roof tiles are also printed, but some of the other decorations are stickers. Also note that the set includes some very desirable rare colors like sand-green, olive-green, and several shades of tan and brown.

Three of the four minifigs come with very detailed new prints, and moulded-in boots. The designs would fit well with pretty much any LEGO City setting. And of course there is a cat – every fishing store has to have a cat. If you would like to see larger versions of the pictures, check the LEGO Ideas section of the Online LEGO Shop. They also have a few more images I haven’t included here.

What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Ideas Old Fishing Store? Are you happy with the final design? Did you notice any other interesting details we haven’t seen before? Are you looking forward to this set? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉

Interestingly enough, this design of sextant was first used in the 2004 Millennium Falcon: https://brickset.com/sets/containing-part-4217675
Apparently Snowtroopers had trouble aiming their cannons, and needed some help. I thought the sextant was an older piece from the Pirates theme in the 1990s, but I guess not. The Fishing Store is definitely filled with excellent parts.

Ah, I see, I thought it was an older part. Thanks for the correction. I’m not very good at navigating the Bricklink catalogs, nor am I familiar with the naming system there, so I don’t use that site as much. I probably should, though, since the inventories there are generally more accurate than LEGO’s….

Yes, the piece first appeared in 1998, so it has been around for a while. I’m hoping that the Fishing Store will do so well that LEGO will decide to add the other models also. If not, hopefully Robert will release the instructions to build the whole village. 🙂

Yes, with a lego dwarf hammer, but the minifigure-head-altars are still not destroyed, because to do that I need a lego moon-hammer which I can only get by beating the wall of bricks, but if I do so I will go into MOC-mode…

By the way, my terraria world is crap, because I have only got 2 lego biomes on the righthand side of my map, and no lego biomes at all on the lefthand side of the map.

Als I dindn’t manage to beat PrashBricks the hyped, as he had 30000 hp, and he was to hyped. My best weapon was a megashark. My favorite drop of him would have been the lego dynamite rocket.

It looks very interesting. But could you at least offer the option of getting faces that are not tractor yellow? These are not preschool sets. And I don’t think race is a huge issue. There is too much political correctness when it is not needed.

Barbara, you can always just swap out the heads. There are plenty of alternate options for other skin colors. Most LEGO fans are very attached to yellow minifigs, as they are an iconic part of the brand. But again, you can always just swap them out if you prefer more realistic skin colors. 🙂

Race is still a somewhat thorny issue, though. Ever since the 70’s, yellow has been used as the established standard of an ethnically neutral color.

However, n the 90’s-oo’s, Lego produced ethnically coded yellow minifigs; Native Americans in the Western theme, and Blacks in the basketball theme.

Natural skin colors only started to appear in 2003, and only for licensed themes, for licensed real NBA players in the basketball theme, and in Star Wars from 2005 on, after the 2003 Cloud City with a brown-skinned Lando Calrissian, a bit embarrassingly pointed out that the ethnical neutrality of the yellow color sometimes only was skin deep…

Breaking Dads have scrutinized the theme in a blog episode on “Lego and race”.

“When the minifigure was first introduced 30 years ago, it was given the iconic yellow skin tone to reflect the non-specific and transcendental quality of a child’s imagination. In 2002, as more licensed properties were added to the assortment, the decision was made to introduce ethnic and skin tones more in keeping with the actual characters and personalities who were being replicated. This included the introduction of black minifigures. However, these ethnic minifigures are only used in our licensed sets, all Lego playthemes continue to use the generic yellow face.”

It’s important to put LEGO’s relationship with skin color in a historical perspective. LEGO was a building toy, not an action figure company. In fact, advertising the earliest sets, children are shown using their own dolls within LEGO houses, cars, etc.

Later, LEGO added some very rudimentary figures to represent humans, and they picked a color they already made (yellow), which looked neutral enough to represent all the different color variations of the mostly homogeneous population of Europe. At this point, minifigs didn’t even have facial features, only a plain head. Minifigs remained very plain and simple for decades, and were never the main focal point of sets. Still, so many generation of children grew up with the smiling little yellow people, they became an iconic representation of the LEGO brand.

As you mentioned, LEGO started to run into conflict with their skin color representation in the late 1990s, when the first Star Wars and MBA sets were released, where the minifigs suppose to represent real people (or aliens or whatever). And LEGO also started to experiment with facial expressions representing different races in the Western sets. While yellow was an okay color to depict people with lighter complexions, it just didn’t work for darker skin tones, and not to speak of alien races.

LEGO did try to push yellow in licensed sets for a while and avoiding characters like Lando, but as some point it became painfully clear that this just wasn’t going to work long term. So they made the decision to switch to more realistic skin-tones for licensed sets, and stay with the iconic yellow for their own themes.

Of course, this is also creating a conflict, because now minifigs can’t be mixed and matched as freely as before. LEGO could have switched completely to realistic skin-tones in the early 2000s, however after decades of the familiar yellow minifigs, this would have upset fans tremendously. I think that given the circumstances, what they have done was really the best solution. By continuing to produce both classic yellow and realistic skin-tones, they are leaving it up to fans to pick and choose what they want, instead of forcing one option or the other.

It is actually very remarkable that the LEGO system survived for so long with so little changes in such a rapidly changing world. While minifigs are much more prominent now as they have ever been, and there is even a new sub-culture of minifig collectors, the minifig body parts and all the basic LEGO elements are still the same as they were at the beginning days of the company. That’s really amazing…

I would rather have someone write on this who is more familiar with the history. I only know from reading about it here and there. I think Gary Istok would be the most qualified, as he knows LEGO’s history in more depth than even people who work for the company. I will ask him to see if he is interested to write an article.

Ah, yeah, while yellow is sufficiently neutral for lighter skinned populations in the Western world and Asia, it doesn’t work too well for darker skinned populations such as Blacks and Indians. (The yellow basketball players tend too look a bit too exaggerated in comparison.)
Even in the USA, it took time and struggle for a significant black middle class to emerge.

Yes, that’s very much part of it as well. Historically, LEGO was bought by middle-class white families. LEGO was only introduced to children of other races and colors recently, and it is still most popular with white kids. I do see Asians at LEGO conventions, and LEGO is definitely very popular with them, but black LEGO fans are still rare.

Thanks for showing and sharing the info about the Old Fishing Store.
Antons bait shop is part of the Sea Front Village like there is a Boat repair Shop, Dive Shop, Diner, Lighthouse and more like a dock warf buoy and a fishing boat. In total I have twelf buildings and the Village is still growing.

Hey, Robert, nice to have you over! Yes, we mentioned your other projects previously (and I have voted on all of them!). When I will have a chance to review the Fishing Store I will definitely mention the other projects again, as they make a wonderful collection. 🙂

The Big Bang Theory also had a couple of stickers. The other sets were all printed. The Old Fishing Store will definitely have the most stickers to date, but it also has a lot of printed pieces. It seems like the stickers could be left off and won’t miss out on much. But yeah, all printed would have been awesome. 🙂